Monday, November 08, 2010

An afternoon in Berkeley

When we were out exploring Berkeley today we stumbled upon a bus that looked quite shocking:

We tried to find out what had happened by asking bystanders and they seemed convinced some kind of bomb exploded because all the windows were shattered (at least as they could see from the side we were on). the inside was totally burnt out and the engine seemed to be totally fine and unburned. Yasu and I had actually seen huge clouds of smoke in the distance about an hour earlier when we left the train station. So people concluded it happened more than an hour ago and all the victims were already taken from the scene by ambulances. I just hoped nobody had been seriously hurt.

Yasu desperately needed a haircut and the salon was right across the bus scene. The hairdressers told us that something under the bus had suddenly caught fire several hours earlier, and that the bus driver had gotten all the passengers out quickly and safely. The bus had been burning for a while before the fire department came to put out the fire. The firefighters had broken half of the windows in the bus in order to put out the fire inside the bus better. Great, no terrorist attack and no casualties, except for the bus of course.

Sorry, forgot to take before and after pictures of Yasu's hair but I got some 'during the haircut' pictures while the lady with the razor was telling us the bus story.

The reason we were in Berkeley was actually to do some grocery shopping at the Berkeley Bowl, the biggest and most impressive supermarket ever, according to one of Yasu's classmates anyway. Yasu wanted to check it out and I also though it would be fun to do some groceries together for a change. The produce department was impressive.

They had loads of seasonal products like pumpkins of course and also produce I know from home but sold in a very different way, like Brussels sprouts still on their stalks. Didn't even know they grew on stalks, but I don't know a lot. They also had weird produce, like kiwis in the shape of fans (sorry no picture), tomatoes in the shapes of pumpkins and bell peppers in all colors, even purple, and cauliflower in rather sick colors, green, orange and again purple. No thanks.

Although, the supermarket's produce department was amazing, because of quantity and quality (the supermarket near us can learn a LOT from the Berkeley Bowl), the rest of the supermarket wasn't impressive at all, a little dirty and unorganized and rather small. Apparently, we'd gone to the wrong Berkeley Bowl, the original one is about 8 to 9 times larger than the one we visited. Well, I'm not sure if I believe that, so we'll just have to check that out another time!